See Ya ‘Round, Pals A Fond Farewell Is Bid To Calvin, His Tiger, Hobbes, And His Vivid Imagination

Goodbyes are hard.

Whether you’re taking leave of a lover, a friend, a relative or even a pet, it’s difficult to accept that you’re not going to see them again.

Not even if it’s just for a while, much less for a long time. And never mind forever.

What can you say, though, about the pain of bidding goodbye to … a comic strip?

A comic strip? Are our lives so empty, so shallow, that we can’t simply dismiss characters we encounter merely though the pages of a newspaper?

No more “Li’l Abner”? No problem. “Rick O’Shay” hits the highway? Happy trails. Farewell to “The Far Side”? Forget about it.

Yet, once in a while, something special in a daily strip comes along. It features a lead character, or series of characters, that engages us in meaningful ways. It reminds us of something, some feeling, that we associate with childhood. It has the ability to say more about how we understand this ongoing event we call life than any full year of Sunday sermons.

Some Spokesman-Review readers feel that way about the strips mentioned above. More to the point of this story, though, many others associate that feeling with “Calvin and Hobbes.”

Which is why it’s no fun to report that, after Sunday, “Calvin and Hobbes” will cease to run in the paper. In fact, it will no longer run in any newspaper - at least not in any fashion other than re-runs. The strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, is quitting, and he’s taking his characters with him.

“This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave with some sadness,” the reclusive Watterson told newspaper editors by fax in early November. “My interests have shifted, however, and I believe I’ve done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels.”

That’s it. That’s the full explanation Watterson is offering hundreds of thousands of newspaper readers who regularly clip his strip to their refrigerators, their bulletin boards, their office doors.

His “interests have shifted.”

Now, it’s not fair to criticize Watterson for his decision. He gave “Calvin and Hobbes” a decade of his life, and he has every right to move on if he wants to.

Still, he is leaving behind a lot of disappointed fans. His characters, particularly the obstreperously thoughtful 6-year-old boy and his toy tiger, are going to be missed.

Of the nearly 200 S-R readers who called our Cityline number to pass on their favorite “Calvin and Hobbes” memories, the vast majority moaned the strip’s passing.

“When Calvin and Hobbes began a decade ago, I lived in Anchorage and had yet picked it up,” said Washington State University student Amy Rambow. “That summer, I visited my grandparents in Ritzville, and my grandma had been clipping out the strips from the S-R and putting them in a spiral notebook. I read and read and read and by the time I got to the baby raccoon story, I was hooked.”

A Favorite Calvin Memory: The Baby Raccoon Story

Calvin and his stuffed toy tiger are walking outside when they spot something on the ground. It’s a little raccoon that appears to be sick. Calvin immediately runs for his mother.

“I sure hope she can help,” Hobbes says.

“Of course she can,” Calvin replies. “You don’t get to be mom if you can’t fix everything just right.”

Calvin’s mother puts the raccoon in a shoebox and brings it inside. But despite her efforts, the animal dies during the night and Calvin is inconsolable. He cries even when his father assures him everything possible had been done.

“I know,” Calvin says. “I’m crying because out there he’s gone, but he’s not gone inside me.”

The strip ends with Calvin and Hobbes walking together through the same woods where they found the little raccoon.

“Mom says death is as natural as birth, and it’s all part of the life cycle,” Calvin says. “She says we don’t really understand it, but there are many things we don’t understand, and we just have to do the best we can with the knowledge we have.”

They both consider Calvin’s words. “I guess that makes sense,” Calvin continues. “But don’t YOU go anywhere.”

Hobbes clutches the little boy to his furry chest. “Don’t worry,” he says.

What makes “Calvin and Hobbes” so special? Many readers say the strip offers something that is found nowhere else.

And, indeed, Watterson did manage to create something unique: While he is hardly the first cartoonist to ever pair a human with a talking animal, he may be the only one who ever did so solely within the human’s imagination.

When we see Hobbes through Calvin’s eyes, he is a full-grown tiger who happens to be named after (and seems to have the same intelligence level of) the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

Yet when we see him as everyone else sees him - Calvin’s parents, his neighbor and schoolmate Susie, his baby sitter Rosalyn, his teacher Miss Wormwood - Hobbes is merely a stuffed toy.

This clearly is not a simple case of, say, a beagle pretending to be a World War I flying ace, or of a gluttonous cat lusting after his master’s roast beef dinner. Watterson is after more than just comic effect: He wants to make a point about the very perception of reality.

“Calvin sees Hobbes one way, and everyone else sees Hobbes another way,” Watterson wrote in “The Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book.” “I show two versions of reality, and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it. I think that’s how life works. None of us sees the world in exactly the same way, and I just draw that literally in the strip.”

Yet for all his serious intent, Watterson imbues the strip with ample humor. Much of the humor comes from Calvin’s self-centered nature and how that nature, combined with the sense of childish willfulness that he projects on Hobbes, constantly gets him in trouble.

“Once upon a time, my wife told me I was Calvin,” recalls S-R reader Dave Spence. “It will be a fond farewell. My favorite cartoon was when Hobbes cut Calvin’s hair.”

Favorite Calvin Memory: The Haircut Calvin, frustrated with his cowlick, is delighted when Hobbes offers to give him a haircut.

“Boy, what a great idea,” he says.

Hobbes agrees. “This is easy!” he says. “You really think your mom will pay me eight bucks?” Naturally, things go wrong. But we’re as much in the dark as Calvin is until, finally, he asks for a mirror and sees, as we do, that Hobbes has cut his hair to the point of baldness.

“You know what’s the rage this year?” Hobbes says. “Hats.”

And …

CUT: To Calvin wearing a fedora, sitting in the darkened office of his alter ego, private eye Tracer Bullet. “Yeah, that’s me,” he says. “I’ve got eight slugs in me. One’s lead, and the rest are bourbon. The drink packs a wallop, and I pack a revolver. … Suddenly my door swung open, and in walked trouble. Brunette, as usual.”

And …

CUT: To a behatted Calvin sitting at the dinner table.

“Take your hat off at the dinner table, Calvin,” his mother says. “It’s not polite.”

“She was a pushy dame,” Calvin thinks. “But she had a case.”

Predictably, Calvin’s mother is upset about his hair. “Hobbes cut it,” Calvin says. “You think I’d do this?”

Ultimately, Hobbes has another idea: to color Calvin’s head with a yellow magic marker. Calvin is delighted, but the final frame portrays him sitting in a tub, scrubbing his head.

“From now on,” he tells Hobbes, “just keep your brainy ideas to yourself, OK?”

There are so many other memories, far too many to mention in the short space here.

There are, for example, the many adventures of Spaceman Spiff fighting such creatures as the giant tyrannosaur that turns out to be Miss Wormwood. Or the arguments between Calvin and Susie over their school lunches. Calvin’s struggles with the bully Moe or the despotic baby sitter Rosalyn. The family camping trips and Calvin’s battles with his bicycle. His wild wagon rides with Hobbes and, always, his incredible flights of imagination (Stupendous Man, the transmogrifier, etc.).

In each of these storylines, and many others, Watterson is both cracking jokes and tackling the great issues of life. Until recently, he hasn’t felt the need to beat us over the head with his conclusions.

In the past few months, maybe even the past couple of years, however, Watterson has given us fewer opportunities to simply laugh. Caught up in an increasingly curmudgeonly attitude, Watterson has become more shrill about what he sees as the dark sides of modern life - about political grandstanding, about media overkill, about ubiquitous advertising messages and simple hypocrisy.

Like other modern cartoonists before him - Gary Larson of “The Far Side,” Berkeley Brethed of “Bloom County” and “Outland,” Garry Trudeau of “Doonesbury” - Watterson has begun showing the classic signs of burnout.

Maybe that’s what he means when he says his “interests have shifted.” Maybe doing something else for a while will re-ignite his enthusiasm for a job that brings so much joy to so many others.

If not, well, that’s one of the best things about comic strips: They never really die.

They’ll always by there in some form - in back copies of old newspapers, book-length anniversary collections or in the sheets of aging newsprint that you can still see everywhere, hanging from refrigerator magnets, thumbtacks or strips of yellowing tape.

And if nowhere else, they’ll always be there in our memories.

We never have to say goodbye to “Calvin and Hobbes.”

Not completely.

“The Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book” is available at area book stores and also at The SpokesmanReview offices downtown, the Valley, Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint for $14.95 (or $8.97 with Good Paper Plus Gold card). Call 747-4422 or (800) 338-8801, ext. 7000 to reserve a copy.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 10 Cartoons

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Readers share their favorite Calvin memories “Dear Calvin: For 10 years your antic fantasies and philosophies have brought daily pleasure to my life. You’re not just a cartoon character, you’re a little boy, the lovable little rascal who balks at your dad’s character lessons, terrorizes Susie and escapes reality with the help of Hobbes and Spaceman Spiff. Yes, Calvin, you are a real boy, and you are too young to die, too young to be silenced and stilled, too young to leave those who love you. Quick, before it’s too late, grab Hobbes and take Spaceman Spiff and go to your trusty spaceship, head for the planet Zog and I’ll meet you there.” - Becky Krels, Spokane

“I went so far as to get a Calvin Tattoo in July. He’s pretty cool, and I like Calvin because he likes to speak his mind. I’m 24 and past the rebel stage.” - April Meissner, Spokane

“I have a son that has been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, and he can be quite a try at times. Reading Calvin and Hobbes has been my daily therapy since The Spokesman-Review picked it up. If his parents can handle him and be as understanding and caring as they seem, there’s still hope for my wife and me.” - Owen Fullmer, Chewelah

“I have always loved Calvin, and my favorite strip was when Calvin’s boogers became frozen in his nose.” - Barbara Lyle, Spokane (formerly of frigid Stanley, Idaho)

“I love the snowmen stories, their mouths gaping open. Their humor is deep and moving.” - Doug Smith, Spokane

“My favorite one is Calvin sitting in bed thinking, ‘When I’m older, I’ll have fun like my parents.’ The next frame is them sleeping on the couch, exhausted from the day.” - Jim Schaffer, Spokane

“It was a great slice of the little boy in all of us. My favorite was when he had the sign ‘Swift Kick in the Butt, $1.’ Hobbes asked how business was, and Calvin said, ‘Terrible.’ And Hobbes asks, ‘Why is that?’ Calvin says, ‘I don’t understand. Everybody I know needs what I’m selling.’ ” - Dr. Robert Parker, Spokane

“I’m absolutely sick over the strip being removed from the paper. My bulletin board with family pictures is littered with these deep-thinking comics so much like our real lives.” - Kay McLaughlin, Spokane

“My grandson in college asked me to save the strips and keep them in a box. Brian would come over and place them chronologically in a scrapbook. He hasn’t gotten over every weekend, so the strips have been accumulating. He’ll be here this winter vacation. I’m going to be out of a job.” - Audrey Manes, Spokane

“My favorite memory is where he and Hobbes are playing checkers and Hobbes says, ‘Jump, jump, jump.’ And Calvin says, ‘Ahhh, you’ve finally fallen into my trap. Do you want to take that last jump over?’ And Hobbes says, ‘Your last remaining piece must have one heck of a plan.’ ” - Matthew Weaver, Spokane

“I read it last at breakfast so that it stays with me throughout the day. I admire the strip’s fine artwork. I look forward to seeing Susie, the voice of exasperated womanhood, who throws deadly accurate snowballs. I love Hobbes, a best friend of the best kind. I identify with Calvin, who dreams through a world intent on building his character. I’ll miss the sweetness and longing that can only be original. They cannot be imitated.” - Bonnie Frederick, Pullman

“I’ll miss Hobbes changing from being alive to being a toy when someone else is around, laying in wait to pounce on Calvin when he comes through the door. The two of them laying in bed, afraid of the demons. And Hobbes’ ability to reduce all of Calvin’s wild theories to one-liners.” - Herb Wagner, Spokane

“Thank you, Bill Watterson, for enriching my life.” - Martha Brookhart, Spokane

“My favorite is Calvin eating six bowls of sugar-coated Sugarbombs, and Hobbes asking why he was doing it. And Calvin says, ‘You don’t see any little brothers or sisters around, do you?’ ” - Diana Taylor

“Calvinball, monsters under the bed, the snowmen, the space ventures. I’ll miss them all.” - Bruce Osso, Spokane

“Calvin reminds me of what it’s like to be a child and to have the imagination and fresh perspective that goes with it. He’s given me permission to see opportunities that few others see. He gives me permission to draw non-standard conclusions about the world from pretty standard data. He gives me permission to reject the guidance of those who want me to fit their picture of how the world should turn, and Calvin reminds me of the child inside me who’s alive and often in agreement with him. He reminds me of the child inside me who should not go totally unattended. I’ll miss both of them.” - Bob Mansfield, Spokane

“As an emergency effort, could you consider re-running all the old ones. We could use the wisdom.” - Lea Abner